For me, a better question is this: Do we perform work in the afterlife?  (1) Put differently, is this life our true career with the afterlife, being a glorified eternal nursing home of static bliss?  (2) Or is the afterlife our true career, for which this life is merely a school?  (2) is the biblical model.

Many see this as a key question for the legitimacy of reincarnation claims.  Why reincarnate if the afterlife provides all the needed educational and career opportunities? Thus, all the schooling and service opportunities illustrated by NDEs and OBE exploration are often seen as in  tension with the view that we simply make preparation for our next incarnation. 

I object to reincarnation for many reasons, but here are just 2: (1) After years of astral exploration, Swedenborg learns that reincarnation memories are an illusion created by astral mind mergers in which the memories of undetected merging entities seem like the projector's own.
(2) Dr. Ian Stevenson's celebrated study of children's past life recall reveals cases in which the alleged "prior personality" later proves to have been still alive after the baby's birth.  For me, the explanation of this in terms of timeless parallel incarnations severely begs the question and is unconvincing.

Jesus reports that discarnate souls can have jurisdiction over 5 or 10 etheric cities, depending on their faithfulness in the little tasks here on earth (Luke 19:17-19).
Paul claims that we will have jurisdiction over the "cosmos" and "angels" (1 Corinthians 6:3-4)." 

Have you checked out the Youtube videos in which Raymond Moody shares the evidence for postmortem survival from "shared NDEs," including his own family's experience? 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWjYjsh8i0w

http://youtu.be/bcOvWGuQTow

Instead of being met by deceased loved ones, some people go through an entirely different experience.  Jesus or God?  Who knows.  No doubt the message is more meaningful than the messenger.

R

Don- What strikes me is not only the complete absence of time in the afterlife but also the absence of logic.  We can't possibly understand what it's like nor can those who experience it possess the language to express the kind of knowledge and knowing they are given.

It is truly ineffable.  So when we read an NDE account I think we need to understand that what we read may be totally off the mark.  It is truly like looking through a glass darkly.

I'm personally not inclined to continue reading/researching the afterlife  (or more accurately what passes for the afterlife) just as I've dismissed reading various chanelled material.  In fact whether ES himself transmits an accurate picture is at best dubious.  The hell he described were false hells, designed to eventually motivate those attracted to such hells to ask for release.

But apparently the real hell is a state of complete nothingness.  The thought of such a state is incomprehensible.  No torture, no fires, no nothing.

I can only think of one adjective for that: terrifying.  That was the message the sky diver brought back that really has hit home with me.

Don- What strikes me is not only the complete absence of time in the afterlife but also the absence of logic.  We can't possibly understand what it's like nor can those who experience it possess the language to express the kind of knowledge and knowing they are given.

Rondele, I have read hundreds of NDE accounts.  I think the problem is not "ineffability" but inarticulateness. In other words, NDErs experience not timelessness, but experiences of time that are relative to their spiritual plane, that is, they they have no sense of duration that compares with our sense of passing time.  So they have no sense of whether their astral  experience lasted 2 minutes or 2 years in earth time. They ask questions and the answers are instantaneous and thus seemingly simultaneous.  Yet the experience only makes sense in earthly terms as a sequential narration   

ES sheds light on this in his description of the astral  equvalent of time and space.  If ES wants to move from point A to visit someone at point B, the geography of the route remains the same.  But the sense of time it takes to cover the distance depends on how compatible the 2 parties are in their core desires or in the willingness of the other to accept a visit.  In other words, the experience of time is a function not of markers along the way, but of psychological compatibility.  Time, then, is relative to mental functions, not to space.  Remember, the very notion of experiencing color or movement already implies duration and hence some sense of time!

Consider Howard Storm's descent into a hellish foggy darkness, where he is tortured until he is rescued by Jesus.  Storm says his ordeal can't be measured in conventional time; it seemed to last for ages.  Yet he is clear that his total NDE experience is also sequential.   

Howard Storm wasn't what one would call a spiritual man before his NDE, but he wasn't a horrible person. That being the case, hopefully he didn't experience hell for ages because he didn't deserve it.

There are people who were probably just as [non]spiritual as Howard when they had an NDE, and they didn't have to experience a hell-like realm before experiencing something wonderful.

I believe that some NDErs serve as spiritual messangers. Different people need different kinds of messages because not everybody is open to the same kind of information. For example, what Howard says will be acceptable for probably a fair number of fundamentalists, but not what Nanci Dannision says.

Emanuel Swedenborg is similar to Howard. Not surprising considering when he lived. There probably weren't a lot of people around at the time who would be open to listening to what someone like Nanci has to say.

I don't mean to suggests that Nanci's interpretations of reality are completely accurate and balanced.

It is important to remember that people progress spiritually quickly only when they truly want to. Until this is so, they clings to fear-based beliefs or whatever quite rigidly, and you have to communicate with them accordingly.

Gman:

I watched a number of Howard Storm's videos, and I don't agree with what you say at all. He seems like a very humble and sincere man to me. The moments when he tears up seem genuine.

He does mention alien races in his book, I don't remember what term he used. Also, would you make a rule that after an NDER writes a book, at a later time he or she can only speak of things that were covered by the book?

The below site has some interesting NDEs. The experience called "A Terrifying Near Death Experience" is perhaps an example of how people experience what they need to experience during an NDE. This is what P.M.H. Atwater found out during her years of NDE research.

http://www.stevenraker.com/SpiriitualAfterlife.htm

For the NDE I named above, I don't believe this experiencer actually experienced the people he killed. Rather, a higher level of being, whether it be God, higher self or some other form of guidance, enabled him to experience what he needed to experience. Such guidance created a simulation.

In his book Howard wrote that he saw Jewish people exist smoke stacks after they were incenerated by the Nazis. They were greeted by Angels.  On a video he said that he doesn't know that he experienced an actual event, it could be that he was shown a simulation. Perhaps the same was true when he experienced a hell-like realm. Considering that NDErs experience hell-like realms in many ways, sometimes in ways that don't seem reasonable, perhaps some experience a simulation because this is what their guidance figured they needed to experience.

On the link I provided, the Peter N experience is interesting, even though it is overly wordy.  He had a very expansive experience without having to first meet any particular religious figure. 

The deceased Jewish people Howard Stern saw during his NDE didn't have to believe in Jesus in order to be greeted by angels.

Would a wise and loving being such as Jesus set things up so people have to believe in him in the way fundamentalists state, before they can ascend to a love-based way of being? Perhaps the important factor is the level of consciousness he represents. 

My problem with most of attempts to answer the question, "Do we work in the Afterlife?, is that almost none of those answers are based on the writer's own direct experience. It's true that a direct experiencer has to interpret the meaning of their experiences through the filters of their biases, beliefs, expectations.  It is also true that any so called expert, myself included, must do exactly the same thing.  And then we add a second layer of interpretation of our own biases, beliefs, etc.on top of the expert's biased interpretation.  Then we attempt to answer such questions through two layers of interpretation.

I've always had great difficulty accepting someone elses version of the truth.  I much prefer my own direct experience as the basis of discovery and exploration.  If there is any value in reading the opinions of experts, for me it is in comparing my direct experience to those opinions.  Much can be learned by reading how others describe what they've discovered and learned through their direct experience.  I am an extremely lucky guy in that I've had the privilege to observe hundreds of  people's describe their experiences exploring our afterlife in workshops I teach.  All of that experience presents a growing, coherent understanding of our afterlife.

As to the question of working in the afterlife my experience suggests it depends on where in the Afterlife you are talking about.  There are places (my opinion and that of fellow explorers) where working in the classical, physical world sense exists.  These places are typically in the Belief Systems Territories in which the inhabitants believe such work is required.  In other places there is no motivation to work in the classical sense.

There are places (again, my and other explorers opinions) where the reasons for working in the classical sense do not exist.  In the physical world we work, basically, for food, shelter, clothing and entertainment.  But what if where you are living in the Afterlife all those basic needs, and any other materialistic thing you desire, are provided by the simple act of thinking them into being?  What then can be the motivation for "working" in a place like that?

Work can be defined as trading your time for something of value.  If all your traditional "things of value" (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) are provided without working for them you are going to have a lot of time to do something else.  So, what will you do to spend your time?

Many people I've encountered who live in these afterlife places spend their time learning, exploring, discovering, teaching . . .  Many decide to spend at least some of their time helping others. 

So, how do you think you'd spend your time in circumstances like those.

Bruce